


drama queens

by Anonymous



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Fluff and Crack, M/M, Singing, The Author Regrets Everything, Wraith (Stargate), feline behavior, hive ships, look this is 100 percent crackfic okay, nonconsensual sniffing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 04:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17821463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: No one knows why, but suddenly Rodney McKay has become like catnip for the Wraith queens.





	drama queens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coldwaughtersq](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldwaughtersq/gifts), [livinginthequestion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livinginthequestion/gifts), [weboverload](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weboverload/gifts), [shinythings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinythings/gifts).



Rodney McKay wasn’t completely certain, but he suspected that his least favorite thing about being taken prisoner on a Wraith hive ship was…the fact that he’d now been taken prisoner on a Wraith hive ship so many times, he had a ranking of his least favorite things.

In which case, his _second_ least favorite thing about it was that any minute now, some sneering bewhiskered leather-clad 2IC _bottom-feeder_ was going to show up at their—cell, gate, membrane, whatever the hell it was—wrinkling its face and grinning fiendishly, and inevitably dragging Sheppard off to be, he didn’t know, _mind_ -raped or whatever by the goddamn hive queen.

Wraith queens never seemed to want, say, Ronon; which, not that Rodney had given a great deal of thought to it, but honestly if you were looking for a midday snack, you couldn’t go wrong  with someone built like a bull moose—so why they did they always take _Sheppard_ , who only ate like once a week and weighed as much as a wet cat, or maybe a very hairy supermodel, and was _barely_ going to offer her more than a mouthful—a mere tidbit, an _amuse-bouche—_

“This one,” purred the one Wraith who actually had facial features, his nostrils flaring appreciatively, and the two pizza-faced drones muscled into the cell and, to everyone’s shock, grabbed McKay by either arm.

“You guys must be new here,” Sheppard interjected quickly, almost losing his drawl in his haste to intervene. Teyla, who’d been crouched down looking for structural weaknesses near the floor, stood up so fast her hair blew dramatically in the backdraft, but then she just waited, poised on the balls of her feet, as did Ronon, both ready to move but visibly unsure in which direction.

Sheppard hooked his thumbs behind the front of his tac vest and sauntered up to the one Wraith who actually had a face, exuding confidence. “ _I’m_ the one she wants to question. I’m in charge—I’m the one who makes things fly, okay, and light up, and go boom.”

Rodney couldn’t get out anything other than a surprised, undignified squeak as the two drones hustled him toward the doorway. He turned to look backward at Sheppard, who’d dropped his poise and was staring at McKay with something like the same frank alarm Rodney figured was probably plastered all over his own face.

“Hey—wait a second!” John barked, making a belated grab for McKay. “Listen, you’re making a big mistake here and your mom’s gonna be _pissed_ , okay, you’re supposed to take _me—_ ”

“This one,” hissed the fancy Wraith, almost pleasantly, if his breath hadn’t smelled like dead shellfish, and shoved Sheppard backward with one hand. Rodney heard the _whuff_ of Sheppard’s wind being knocked out of him as he skidded back across the floor, and Ronon’s wordless shout as he ran forward only to hit the cell’s fibers, hands reaching out too late.

“Rodney!” yelled Teyla, though Rodney didn’t know why; but she sounded panicked, and that wasn’t…that wasn’t good.

•

Admittedly, nothing involving the Wraith was ever good, but this seemed worse than usual. Rodney wondered  _why him_ , this time, as they dragged him through the evil-smelling knee-deep fog. Other than Todd, none of the Wraith had ever seemed particularly intelligent; had they finally figured out _he_ was the brains of the operation? He supposed you didn’t need to be very intelligent, when there were a vast number of you, all with super-strength and psionic hive-mind and, of course, the ability to suck your victims dry like particularly shriveled California raisins. He closed his mouth, which was still hanging open, and swallowed.

“I’m sorry, is there possibly some misunderstanding, are you really sure you—” he turned to ask one of the drones, before realizing that it probably couldn’t see or hear him, and his throat made an unpleasant strangled noise and then stopped working.

Another one of his least favorite things about hive ships was that they were invariably fucking _freezing_ ; he could see his breath, and of course he’d left the jumper that morning in just a short-sleeved shirt, because MX3-369 was balmy and equinoctial and practically Malibu. Teyla had been flashing more skin than a swimwear model and even John had ditched the uniform jacket in favor of his stupid black t-shirt and aviators.

It had actually been a very nice planet, for once, with plenty of smiling buxom maidens and surprisingly decent pastry, and an intriguing attempt at solar-powered generators. Unfortunately, they hadn’t really been there very long before there was, you know, the running, and the screaming, and then the culling—

Without his noticing they’d entered a large room with a glimmering black dais, and the drones were shoving him to his knees and he was looking up at, well, apparently the hive queen, who had her back turned and was doing something fastidious to a blinking console; but the flowing white tattered dress and the long unnaturally shiny chartreuse hair were more or less a dead giveaway.

“Ow,” he said, automatically, as his knees hit the cold hard surface. He yanked his arms free of the drones’ grip and crossed them defiantly over his chest. Whatever; how scary could one lone Wraith queen be? She was just some millennia-old Miss Havisham wannabe, alone in her unfashionably ragged-edge wedding gown, with her very long, very sharp, very pointy—

“—teeth,” he said, gulping, as she turned to face him and made an expression that he guessed was meant to be a smile, albeit sort of a…translucent greenish one, through cracked maroon lips. Why the hell did Wraith even _need_ teeth, he wondered frantically, heart rate skittering, trying to distract himself. Maybe disuse or vestigial status explained why their smiles were always in such desperate, practically British need of dental work.

The queen blinked at him, almost coyly, and her yellow nictitating membranes flickered across her slitted pupil, like some reptilian equivalent of batting her eyelashes. Rodney tried not to shudder, or to think too closely about what the Wraith mating process might entail. He found himself repressing the memory of Carson giving a PowerPoint presentation involving the word _ovipositors_.

“Whatever it is you want to know, I’m not telling you,” he blurted, fighting to summon anger as she tilted her head to regard him, icy digits of one hand trailing thoughtfully along his jawline.

“Human male,” she said, and her voice sounded a little dreamy.

“As a matter of fact, yes, but trust me you have _no_ idea who you’re dealing with here. Sure, okay, maybe I don’t have black ops training like _some_ people, or eighteen _knives_ in my hair, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself in a fight, you know you’re hardly the first Wr—”

“Hush, human male,” the queen said, and dug her fingers into his face, holding it still. He tried to jerk away from her grip but there was suddenly a seriously nasty throbbing inside his skull and he found himself staring directly at her as she—there was no other word for it— _snuffled_ at him, making a weird low appreciative sound in the back of her throat, pressing her nose into the skin of his cheek, tickling his ear, making his skin crawl.

“Unbelievable, this is just _perfect_ , are you—are you _smelling_ me? What the—”

Rodney could feel the strands of his hair stirring as she pressed the tip of her nose against his scalp (okay, seriously cold, and _wet,_ it felt like a sardine), inhaling and exhaling rapidly. This was—Sheppard had never mentioned being _smelled_ —and now she was making a chuckling noise that was actually somehow familiar, where had he heard it before, where, where—

“Oh my god,” he said, staring at her appalled, his mouth running all by itself. “You sound exactly like _my cat_.” Those long summer afternoons, just before he’d left Colorado, when Carrie Fisher would run back and forth in front of the window screen, gargling demonically at some chubby pigeon going about its serene bird life, driving her bonkers, within smell but just out of reach.

The queen flickered her eyes at him some more; they made a sickening clicky sound, but Rodney was sure now it was some kind of misguided attempt to be _charming_. Why wasn’t this happening to Sheppard, he thought wildly; _he_ was the Kirk of the team, _he_ was the one the alien princesses were supposed to go _crazy_ for—

“Cat, what is a _cat_ ,” said the Queen, still clucking fervently in the back of her throat, and Rodney winced when the headache swept from one side of his skull to the other, as though she were scanning its contents. “Ah—a smaller life form. A stupid one.”

“I beg your pardon,” Rodney said, affronted, “cats are _far_ more intelligent than most people realize, and mine in particular not only knew her name but was in fact able to—wait, are you, are you _licking_ me?!”

The queen finished slobbering along the side of his neck, threw her head back, pupils all huge and crazy, and this time there was no escaping it: she drew her upper lip up over her teeth, baring them and—well, there it was. She was making the exact same face that Carrie Fisher made whenever she smelled…one of two things. Either another cat, or—

He pulled as far away from her as possible, but she had him by the back of the neck, so he closed his eyes and tried desperately to remember the name of the compound in _Nepeta cataria_ —epinepetalactone? nepetalactone? some kind of ester, maybe hydroxycarboxylic acid. He had an unpleasantly vivid recollection of reading that cats, even large cats like lions and jaguars, weren’t so much stoned or tripping on the herb as they were sexually aroused by its essential oil compound. A compound which was very, very close to feline pheromones.

“I’m it, I’m the catnip,” whispered Rodney, in complete horror, just as the Wraith queen flung herself at his feet and started rolling against him, digging one shoulder into his BDUs ecstatically, knocking him off balance. “This isn’t happening, it’s not happening, I’m in a stasis pod, it’s a bad dream—”

He found himself looking around wildly for the drones, as if _they_ might help him, seeing as how their despot had totally lost her mind. But they were gone, had left him alone with the queen, who had by now torn off a large piece of Rodney’s shirt with her razor-sharp nails and was lying on her back, batting it up into the air and snatching it back into her mouth, gnawing on it with a concentrated frenzy he could only be grateful wasn’t currently directed at his actual person, especially given the amounts of drool involved.

He backed as far away as he dared; he didn’t want to know what would happen if she found out about underwear.

•

Teyla and John stood on either side of Ronon, gripping the fibers of their cell wall as they all watched the last knife clatter uselessly to the floor, the door panel glowing serenely, untouched.

“Having an off day,” said Ronon tightly, before turning and kicking one of the ropy membranes as hard as he could. He left an impressive dent; two other tentacle-like extrusions came and twisted around it protectively.

John felt his shoulders inching incrementally up toward his ears, muscles bunching with tension. He and Teyla looked at each other.

“Why would they want _Rodney?”_ she breathed, and he shook his head minutely; no fucking idea. But not cool. Really not cool.

“No, it is not cool at all,” she agreed, and John had said that last part out loud. “Does Dr. McKay have any of the specialized training that you were given?”

John made a face. “You mean Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape? No, no he does not. He has more training in how to make a _sandwich_ than how to stand up to an interrogation, and that’s saying something, because I’ve never even _seen_ him make a goddamn sandwich, he—” and here John had to stop talking. All he could see was the ragged scar that wound around Rodney’s forearm, the cut he’d rolled his eyes at, after the Genii invasion, until later he saw the stitches Beckett had put in: ugly jagged black dashes wrapping all the way around McKay’s pale skin, curved and thick like thorny briars. Rodney wasn’t meant for this kind of shit. This was supposed to be the stuff that John did; _he_ was the buffer between the civilians and the enemy. He bit his lip and tried not to put his face in his hands.

Teyla touched his arm. “As we have all seen, Rodney is not the man he was when you arrived in the city. He is not even as he was before the siege. He is stronger than you think, Colonel.”

“Still doesn’t explain why they want him,” Ronon said, sitting down heavily on the floor and leaning back against the wall.

“Maybe something is broken, and they believe he can repair it,” tried Teyla, but she was pacing and looking as upset as Sheppard felt, fingers twitching and head canted a little to one side. He knew she was trying to listen; he knew if she learned anything, she would tell them.

John went through his pockets for the umpteenth time, even though he knew it was pointless, checking fruitlessly, habitually, for a 9mm or a knife that wasn’t there. The guards had taken away his extra maglight, too, twisting it until it came on and then spitting when it shone in their eyes, also his combi-tool and even his eating utensils; but there weren’t metal bars anyway, so he’d just have to improvise, have to make some noise…another way. Which he could do.

He raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Teyla and Ronon. “When we get home, remind me to show you a movie called _Spaceballs_.”

Teyla frowned. “Is it yet another kind of sport?”

John grinned, feeling reckless. “There’s a song my people sing when we’re wrongfully imprisoned. And we like to sing it _very loudly_ , so that everyone around can enjoy it,” he told her, and took a moment to appreciate the dubious look she and Ronon shared before he closed his eyes. With as much basic-training gusto as he could, John began to belt out, in his most hideous, cracked baritone: “Nobody knows / the trouble I’ve seen! / Nobody knows / but Je-sus!”

He could already hear Wraith hissing in displeasure, in the distance.

•

Rodney wanted to get on the other side of the room, as far away from the queen as possible; he could have put some distance between him and her crazy-eyed huffing, but every time he thought she was calming down, she’d start circling him again, pinning him in place with her evil headache-powers and taking nose hits off him like he was an aerosol can, at which point she’d get all worked up again and start rolling around and slavering gleefully on the floor.

The hem of his shirt was by now in tatters and he’d lost both boots and a sock. Maybe if he threw the other one, she would chase it, and it would distract her. She had managed to claw a handkerchief out of his back pocket (since when did he carry handkerchiefs? had it been in that pocket since Earth?) and was currently digging her shoulder ecstatically into it, over and over, hypnotically, upper lip still raised and twisted in that extremely creepy curl. His hair was soaking wet and he was trying really hard not to think about that, like, at all.

“Look, your, um, your majesty,” Rodney tried, raising his palms in what he hoped was a calming, soothing gesture, and he told himself sternly for once not to be a total asshole about this; it wasn’t her fault he was clearly irresistible, and not the suck-your-life-out-through-your-chest kind, for once. This could still go either way. He took a breath and tried to sound placating.

“So you’re clearly—and I’m, I’m obviously _not_ —well, what I’m trying to say is this is never going to work out, in the long run I mean, and it’s not that I don’t think you’re, you’re, you’re really—okay, let’s just say you’re really _something_ , let’s put it that way. But whatever you’re hoping for is just not going to materialize, even though I apparently smell like…whatever it is you think I do.”

Jesus, what _did_ he smell like? He twisted his head to sniff under his arm as subtly as possible, but detected nothing other than Athosian laundry soap, terrified McKay, and the usual Old Spice High Endurance, which he’d taken to wearing in grad school because he could get away without reapplying it for a couple of days. He certainly didn’t have waves of Aqua Velva coming off him; if anyone’s fragrance would be alluring, you’d think it would have been Sheppard’s aftershave, which he mocked in public but privately found its soft, faintly woodsy notes oddly reassuring (and in fact had learned from Lorne that Sheppard was prone to razor burn if he didn’t use it—it was some ritzy Italian stuff they both preferred, with green tea and cucumber, and Rodney had discovered it was literally the only toiletry item in Sheppard’s almost entirely empty medicine cabinet. In his defense, he hadn’t been just being nosy; he’d gone looking for paracetamol, after a particularly bad jumper landing).

The queen flopped over and lay looking up at him, panting, which didn’t seem like very regal behavior, and made some noises that were maybe meant to be words. Despite himself he got irritable again.

“I’m sorry, are you speaking an actual language, or is this more of the feline wallowing and salivating, because I can’t really—”

 _Mine_ , she was yowling, over and over, and Rodney felt a chill run down his backbone. _Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine._

“Yes, well, I can’t really agree with you there I’m afraid,” he babbled, and this time he did back away, on his hands and knees, until he fetched up against the wall and there was nowhere further to go. “I’m not really available you see, the fact is I’m sort of taken, and I’d appreciate it if—”

The queen sat up abruptly, as if listening intently, then rose to her feet in a crouch and screamed, resonating overtones at such a high pitch that Rodney had to clap his hands over his ears, cringing.

Two drones—the same ones? how could anyone tell?—appeared before him and hauled him up unceremoniously by the armpits, as the queen dashed back to her console, still screeching, and started slamming buttons and glaring at displays, seemingly having forgotten all about him.

Rodney’d never felt so grateful to be dragged off like a sack of potatoes in his _life_.

•

If he did say so himself, John thought that, as a trio, he and the two Pegasus natives were turning out some fine vocal work. Teyla had quickly figured out a lovely high harmony, and Ronon had settled into a low bass drone. They were somewhat limited by the fact that John only knew one line of the song, true. But he threw in random lyrics from “Hotel California” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” as needed, also, for no clear reason, “Killing in the Name”—and anyway it wasn’t like the Wraith were going to ask for the liner notes.

“Thunder and lightning, very very frightening!” Sheppard shouted, as Teyla added some yodelling, and Ronon apparently did some kind of circular-breathing thing to keep the bass going; he sounded like an entire monastery full of angry Tibetans, or very large hornets.

A cluster of Wraith had gathered outside their cell and seemed to be conferring wordlessly, looking at each other with their hands clapped over their ears. John switched back to Rage Against the Machine and started stamping on the downbeat. “And now you’re under control / now you do what they told you!”

(Teyla’s eyes narrowed, and okay, he was going to have to explain that particular lyric later.)

But for now, they were creating a decent distraction. The guards appeared to come to a consensus, all turning to face the cell as a group, and the ropy webbing of the door writhed in opposite directions, creating an opening. John had just started in on the Ol’ Dirty Bastard verse from “Protect Ya Neck” when the Wraith who’d taken Rodney—John had started calling him Chad, in his head, after a really annoying guy from ROTC—reached in and closed his hand around John’s throat, lifting him about a foot off the ground.

“First things first, you’re fuckin’ with the worst,” John croaked out, grinning despite himself, combat boots dangling. He felt rather than saw Ronon right behind him, energy barely leashed.

“You will be silent,” Chad said, but he seemed oddly uncertain for a Wraith, and after looking over his shoulder at the others, actually lowered Sheppard back to the floor. John gasped for air and probably would have fallen over, but Ronon held him up, a solid warmth at his back. “What is the meaning of this noise?”

“It’s called _singing_ —you guys should get out more, go to some shows,” Sheppard coughed, trying to swallow without gagging. He finally got his throat working in the right direction, and started in gamely on the chorus of “Dust in the Wind,” which he’d taught Kanaan on guitar last winter. Teyla brightened; she knew this one, fortunately, because at this point John was mostly just wheezing.

Chad folded his arms and stood there, which was, okay, not what John expected; but even stranger was that the other Wraith slowly lowered their hands from their ears and began to gather quietly behind him; Sheppard could see more of them coming, from every direction, apparently from all parts of the ship, pausing to stand in groups and listen, heads tilted, confusion and loathing warring on their faces with curiosity. All right; this could work. If they could maybe lure enough of them inside—

“Oh, having a little concert, are we? And you started without me?” snapped Rodney, as the drones shoved him unceremoniously into the cell. Sheppard caught him as he stumbled past Chad and grabbed his arms, holding him up by his biceps, his eyes widening at Rodney’s ripped shirt and disheveled wet hair, frantically scanning him for injuries. “Are there canapes? What about wine? Just _eine kleine Nachtmusik_ , sure—have fun, make merry, belt out a few _show tunes_ while I’m out there being _snorted like a street drug_ —”

Sheppard couldn’t see a scratch on him, but Rodney’s hair was sodden, plastered down to his scalp; what clothing wasn’t torn was damp and rumpled, and he had an oddly flustered expression. “Did she hurt you?”

“I can’t even, oh my god, never mind,” said Rodney, more or less all at once, and started laughing, a little hysterically.

In lieu of slapping him (which he knew from past experience didn’t work with Rodney anyway; probably thanks to growing up with Jeannie, he tended to just slap back), Sheppard handed him, still giggling alarmingly, off to Teyla—unwilling to let him go; but it was interfering with his plan. Granted, it wasn’t so much of a plan, it was more that they’d _taken his chief science officer instead of him_ and this pissed him off royally, but he could work with this.

He turned back to Chad. “There’s lots more songs—hundreds, thousands. We could teach them to you. You don’t even know about the good stuff. Elvis, Weird Al, Andrew Lloyd Webber. There’s Britney Spears, you’ll love her. 50 Cent. Lionel Richie—”

Chad took a half-step forward, curiosity on his face, but then hesitated, and that was all the opening Ronon needed. In a flash he had Chad’s stunner, and Chad as a shield; and then John had a stunner, and Teyla was scooping up Ronon’s knives and distributing them in a neat half-circle, mostly into the torsos of Wraiths. Sheppard shoved Rodney back and shouted “Stay behind me!” as the four of them swept the hallway and started down a slightly emptier-looking corridor, with the rest of the Wraith shrieking and scattering out of their stunner blasts.

“Colonel, wait—Colonel! John!” Rodney kept trying to tell him something but Sheppard was too busy clearing a path, until the team was finally headed toward the dart bay and he was trying to remember how to initialize the freaking culling beam. He kicked aside a melted stunner and half a Wraith that Ronon had just blown a hole through, hauling Rodney grimly behind him, not really paying attention. There was a trick to the beam’s ugly Wraithy interface that always threw him, and he usually just guessed at the last minute, but he would rather not play fast and loose with his team’s particles if he could help it.

Ronon spun on his heel, falling back and shooting behind them; John didn’t even turn to look, counting on Ronon to cover their exit. He crouched at one side of the doorway to the bay, still hauling a protesting Rodney along by his collar; Teyla faced him on the other side, face smudged and eyes huge in the dark. They nodded at each other, then swung through at the same time, stunners raised—

—only to run into the least-attractive Wraith queen that Sheppard had ever seen; and, frankly, considering his previous encounters, that was really saying something. This one was taller, hair an unappealing color of neon yellowish-green, and she somehow looked even more deranged than they usually did. Again, how that was possible he wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t taking any chances, and he squared off against her, blocking her from Rodney with every inch of his body. She waved a soggy scrap of blue-grey cloth at him, hissing, and reached out with clawed fingers.

“Mine, mine, mine!” she shrieked at Sheppard, who felt more confused than anything, but the one thing he did feel pretty sure of was that she was wrong about that.

“Yeah, not so much,” he said, and let her have it, the entire sizzling bolt. She reeled but didn’t fall—at least, not from the stunner blast; but then something shook the entire ship, and she slid to her knees, wailing like a banshee.

“It’s under attack!” shouted Ronon, coming up between them just as the ground seemed to be going in five different directions. A long orange rip in the air tore through the bay as darts tried to scramble, shooting down at least a dozen at once. Debris flew everywhere, hot sparks and shards of metal wheeling in flung arcs; a piece struck the queen and she batted it away with one hand, shrieking.

But then things got confusing for Sheppard, or maybe he’d been hit, because he seemed to see two queens; he shook his head hard, to clear it. Now there were four, but that couldn’t be right, except one was really short, and had electric blue hair. Two of them were literally rolling in a ball of snarling rage, while the blue-haired one tackled the first queen—who was still chanting _mine, mine—_ and knocked her backward. They fought like angry cats, sliding down the wall together, apparently wrestling for the scrap of cloth, yowling and spitting at each other.

Sheppard could feel McKay clutching at the back of his tac vest as another blow rocked the hive. Whoever was attacking the ship was doing one hell of a job, and Sheppard might have felt a little sorry for them if they hadn’t fucking _taken Rodney_.

“That’s it, this has been about as much fun as I can stand,” he said, all but throwing Rodney at Teyla, who had crouched behind what looked a hell of a lot like a puddlejumper, staring out at the Wraith queens in undisguised horror. “Party’s over, time to go home.”

Apparently it looked like a puddlejumper because that’s what it was. Sheppard stumbled gratefully inside and the console lit up blue under his hands like he’d valet-parked it.

“This party sucks,” said Ronon, shooting through the door as it closed behind them, and John spared a grateful thought for whichever Ancients hadn’t made it, but had left them transportation off the hive ship, which frankly didn’t seem like it had much longer anyway.

“Wraith parties always do,” Sheppard said. “Teyla, find me that gate in orbit and _dial it_.”

“It is already done,” she said, sounding calmer than she looked, a long graze down one arm dripping blood. Ronon pulled off his shirt and threw it to her, and she mopped the wound with her uninjured hand while dialing angrily with the other. Rodney was in the back, making high-pitched sounds of unalloyed terror and doing something with the crystals.

“McKay? I really need this to work, so if you c—”

_“Now!”_

The puddlejumper wobbled, jerked, righted itself, and shot out of the hive ship like he’d hit an eject button. From outside, they could see three other hive ships, all four vessels firing on each other and not paying any attention to them.

“Wonder what that’s all about,” Sheppard said, veering away from them toward the gate, not particularly caring. Then: “McKay, you all right back there? You’re being awfully quiet.”

“Just trying to get the, the, the _slobber_ off me,” Rodney said, breathless. “It’s _adhesive_.” But it wasn’t till they were through the gate and on their way back down to Lantea, one slightly more fragrant puddlejumper richer, that they all turned around to see what he meant.

•

“You weren’t there! I was _assaulted!_ You don’t know!” McKay kept yelling, aggrieved, as they left the infirmary. In the end Beckett had given up with alcohol wipes and hydrogen peroxide and resorted to a bottle of pure acetone from Cadman, who said she used it to remove fingernail polish. Rodney now smelled like a slumber party, yet the permeating scent of _aroused Wraith queen_ still hadn’t dissipated.

“No, Rodney, I _don’t_ know, but if you don’t shut _up_ about it, the entire _city_ will know before we reach your quarters.” Or, more likely, John reflected, they’d be able to tell from the smell alone. They exited the transporters and a few Marines scattered, holding their hands in front of their faces and coughing. “Come on, hot stuff, time to hit the showers.”

“Water isn’t going to cut it, I’ll have this _forever,_ ” wailed Rodney, scrubbing at his hair.  
  
“We can get some turpentine from Lorne,” said John, and steered him toward his door. “But at least give it a try. You look like a horny xenomorph had her way with you.”

“Yes, yes, very witty,” said Rodney, “mock the guy who’s covered in _mucilaginous drool_.”

“You know, you should be flattered,” Sheppard said. The door closed behind them and he stood in Rodney’s quarters with his arms folded, for some reason not leaving. He should go; he had paperwork to fill out, and just from touching Rodney, his own hands and clothes were gummy and redolent. It was like poutine gravy, only made with rubber cement. They both needed a shower. “She really had a thing for you.”

“She did, didn’t she?” said Rodney, brightening. He looked down at the tattered hem of his shirt, considering.

Sheppard didn’t like it. He hadn’t liked it _at all._ “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“I mean, there were obviously reasons why it never would have worked out, but—” Rodney looked up at Sheppard, suddenly getting it. “That’s it! That’s why they were there.”

“They?” said Sheppard, head to one side, eyebrow raised.

“The hive ships! The other queens! They _all_ wanted a piece of this. She must have broadcast it to them—don’t you see? If we can figure out what it is about me, make a, an, I don’t know, a concentrated form of it somehow, we could use it as bait—”

“Eau de Wraith? Rodney cologne?” John sniffed his own wrist; honestly it just smelled like cat pee to him, but then he wasn’t a Wraith.

“Ha very ha,” said Rodney, “but seriously.”

“I’m always serious,” said Sheppard. He could feel himself grin, which sort of belied that.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing good old-fashioned Athosian lye soap won’t fix,” Sheppard said. He hip-checked Rodney, trying to jostle him toward the bathroom without touching him further. “Come on—clothes off. Carson got samples, we’ll figure out the secret to your charisma later.”

“But can you imagine the repercussions this could have? It could lead to victory over the Wraith, for once and for all—I won’t just be in the history books as a Nobel laureate in physics, they’ll have separate volumes for the fact that I saved two galaxies through the raw power of my unbearable sex appeal alone,” Rodney exulted, pulling off his remaining sock.

John stared at it for a second, then picked it up and threw it into the trash where it belonged, rolling his eyes. “Unbearable is one word for it, yes.”

Rodney struggled out of his pants, hopping on one leg, then stood there beaming, thumbs hooked inside the waistband of his boxers. “I mean, of _course_ they wanted to get with this. Who wouldn’t?”

“No idea, really,” said Sheppard. He sighed and pulled his own shirt over his head; unzipped his BDUs, kicked out of his boots.

“I’m literally _irresistible,”_ Rodney went on. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are, to hit this?”

Sheppard eyed Rodney's tattered shirt distastefully; it would have to be burnt. “Sounds amazing, I can hardly wait. Just, can we wash off the love-slobber first?”

“Oh, is that what the kids are calling it,” Rodney murmured. He twisted, trying to kiss Sheppard in the bathroom doorway.

“Not on your life,” said John, holding him at arm’s length and reaching past him into the shower stall. He turned on the spray as far as it would go. “Boxers. _Off_. I’m not going anywhere near you until that smell is gone.”

“But why now,” Rodney said, staring at the boxers in his own hand.

“Why shower sex?”

“No, why am I—wasn’t I always a catch?”

“Later, McKay.”

“No, I’m serious—I’ve been around Wraith queens; what makes me so irresistible all of a sudden? I was just another juice box to them, before. What’s changed?”

They looked at each other over the rising steam of the shower. “Oh boy,” said John, and bit his lip.

“Yep,” said Rodney, and didn’t even try to not sound smug. “It’s the sex.”

“Come on,” John protested.

“No, that’s it—it must have changed my pheromones somehow—we’ll have to go back to the lab, Carson will have samples from when I first joined the expedition, we’ll compare them. You know it’s entirely possible, even highly likely, that—”

“Rodney,” said Sheppard.

“As far as it’s why sex with _you_ , that part I don’t know—possibly something about your strong natural expression of the gene, or maybe the fact that so many Wraith queens have gotten inside that messy-haired pea-brain of yours, it really could be either; or maybe it’s our specific combination, something about us together, that—”

 _“Rodney_ ,” said Sheppard. He was getting cold.

“And you know what that means, Colonel,” Rodney concluded triumphantly. The boxers hit the floor at the same time John’s back hit the wall of the shower. “You have to blow me, for the greater good. The fate of the Pegasus Galaxy depends on it.”

“Figures,” said Sheppard, but he didn’t look too upset about it; and if there was a gleam in his eye that might have reminded Rodney a little too uncomfortably of recent events aboard the hive ship, he seemed more than willing to put that out of his mind, and think of Atlantis.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written last February 14 to fill a Romancing McShep prompt from the brilliant [melagan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melagan): "No one knows why, but suddenly Rodney McKay has become like catnip for the Wraith queens." I wrote it, promptly forgot all about it, and am posting it a whole year later. Special thanks to [campchitaqua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/campchitaqua) and [expatgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/expatgirl) for the last-minute punch-up.
> 
> Unscheduled offworld activation! Going out to my beloved GÅTERS group chat on Twitter. Y'all are my OT4.


End file.
